Skip to Main Content

ENG 099/101: English Composition - LaFountaine

Search Strategies

Search Terms

When searching in a database, here are a few tips on phrasing your search for best results:

  • Use only the most important words instead of an entire statement
    • Instead of searching "what is the effect of social media use on teenagers," try "social media teenagers". For even better results, consider separating the main concepts into different search boxes using Boolean operators (explained below).
  • Leave out filler words
    • Take out words that might be necessary to put a sentence together but aren't necessary to convey the meaning of your topic. In the above example, that would be words like is, the, of, and on.
  • Brainstorm synonyms
    • Try out other words that are related to your topic. For the above example, we could try "adolescents" in addition to teenagers.
    • Consider making a list of possible synonyms before searching and keeping a record of everything you try.
  • Adjust the scope of your topic
    • If you're getting too many results, try adding another keyword that will make your topic more specific. For the above example, we could consider adding "mental health" to narrow down our search if we were interested in social media's effects on mental health in particular.
    • If you aren't getting very many results, consider removing a keyword to look at a broader topic.

Filters

To refine your search results, experiment with various filters that are provided in the database, usually on a sidebar on the left of the page.

  • Peer reviewed:
    • Only shows scholarly sources
  • Full text:
    • Only shows results for which we can automatically click through to access the full article
  • Publication date:
    • Prioritize recent results or results from a specific time frame
  • Language:
    • Narrow down the results to the language(s) you can actually read!

Boolean Operators

Graohic with three venn diagrams showing how Boolean operators work: AND retrieves results in the center of the diagram, NOT retrieves results only from side of the diagram and excludes the overlap, OR retrieves results covering the entire diagram. Boolean operators define the relationship between your search terms, allowing you to refine and focus your results.

  • AND narrows your results by linking two terms together
  • OR widens your results by bringing up results that have one term or another
  • NOT restricts your search by excluding the term directly following it - it's a great operator to use if your search is retrieving a lot of irrelevant results!

Graphic and explanation from the University of Illinois library